Sometimes conservation and the creation of public access take patience and time.
In 2015, private landowners worked with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Wyoming Game and Fish Department to create a 15-year hunting access agreement for their Mule Creek Ranch, a sprawling 6,660-acre landscape near the southern Laramie Range Mountains between Casper and Laramie.
Doing so temporarily gave hunters public access to this private land and improved access to 38,000 acres of contiguous state and federal land in a part of Wyoming where access was challenging.
But RMEF’s goal was to do something more permanent and beneficial.
In 2022, after years of assessment, communication and collaboration, RMEF acquired the ranch to conserve its year-round and winter elk range that’s also home to mule deer, pronghorn antelope and other wildlife.
Twenty-three months and several habitat improvement projects later, in 2024, and aiming to create the best conservation and management outcome with habitat-focused range and grazing management, nonmotorized, permanent hunting access and wildlife management in mind, RMEF conveyed 2,660 acres of the ranch’s western property to Wyoming Game and Fish.
Now, the state agency manages public access parking, corrals, a source of water, and sage grouse lek and priority habitat as a wildlife habitat management area.
The eastern 4,000 acres are owned by a ranching family with a history on the land and a proven conservation ethic that placed a permanent public hunting access easement on their property, which will be managed by Wyoming Game and Fish.
Creating and improving public access is a long-time focus of RMEF’s mission.
Since 1984 RMEF has opened or improved public access to nearly 1.6 million acres.
To view the sites and boundaries of RMEF land conservation and access projects, turn on the RMEF layer and use the code RMEF when you sign up for your onX subscription to receive a 20% discount.